Britons Go For Bears

London Tickets Selling For A Stiff Upper Price

LONDON — The Bears and the Cowboys will clash on the gridiron at London`s Crystal Palace stadium Tuesday and, with luck, maybe 1,000 fans will show up.

That`s the Cotswold Bears (6-3 this season) and the Dunstable Cowboys

(7-2), two of the 65 teams in Britain`s American Football League (UK), which began its season in the spring.

The other Bears and Cowboys, from Chicago and Dallas respectively, will take the field Sunday, Aug. 3, at Wembley Stadium in London, Britain`s premier sports arena. And, although it is only a National Football League exhibition, the game is shaping up as the biggest event in the brief history of American football in this country.

All 80,000 tickets have been sold since last May, and if Wembley Stadium could hold another 80,000 people, those tickets probably would be gone, too. According to some reports, tickets are being scalped at $300 apiece.

Millions of Britons who don`t get into the stadium are expected to watch edited highlights of the game on television later in the day, and NBC-TV will carry it live (noon on WMAQ-TV, Channel 5, in Chicago) to a national audience in the United States.

``This week we had the royal wedding, and next week we have the Bears and Cowboys,`` said Andrew Croker, joint managing director of Cheerleader Productions, the TV company that introduced American football to Britain four years ago and set off a national craze. ``Britain needs that kind of publicity. I was convinced the game would not be a sellout, but we couldn`t have two better teams for a British audience.``

The Cowboys have been firm favorites with a lot of Britons since edited versions of NFL games began appearing on British TV in 1982. The Bears were rarely featured in the films until their Super Bowl season, but they now have a huge following.

``Players like William Perry and Jim McMahon have done a lot for the game in this country,`` Croker said. ``People latched onto them as personalities. Come next week, with photo calls and players appearing on TV chat shows, there will be enormous public interest. And because of the Dallas-Chicago rivalry, I think both teams will take the match more seriously than they should.``

Both teams are scheduled to arrive in London Monday. They will work out at Crystal Palace and give coaching clinics during the week.

They will bring a lot of followers with them who may give London something of the social atmosphere of a Super Bowl city. The Hanover Square Association, composed of merchants who own some of London`s most expensive real estate, is still trying to come to grips with Mayor Harold Washington`s plans to organize a pep rally for Bears fans in the square Saturday night.

Southfork Ranch, home of the ``Dallas`` television soap opera, is organizing a rival Cowboys attraction that same evening, a barbecue at Victoria Embankment Gardens that will feature live country and western music. Tickets are selling for $112 apiece, with proceeds going to the International Spinal Research Trust and its American equivalent, the Kent Waldrep National Paralysis Foundation.

The Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders are coming with their team and are likely to draw slightly more attention than Danny White or Tony Dorsett. Gary Fencik will address the American Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, and players from both teams will be guests at a huge reception Friday night at the home of U.S. Ambassador Charles H. Price II.

Price has been allocated the royal box on Sunday at Wembley, a stadium opened by King George V in 1923, and he will host 40 of his British friends. He also will toss the coin before the game to decide who kicks off.

The First National Bank of Chicago will host a reception for 1,000 people at Wembley on the day of the game, with food catered by London restaurateur and former Chicagoan Bob Payton (no relation to Walter).

Twice before American professional football teams have come to Britain, but this is the first time any have come with the full backing of the NFL. In 1983 the Minnesota Vikings played the St. Louis Cardinals before only 33,000 fans at Wembley. The following year two United States Football League teams, the Philadelphia Stars and the Tampa Bay Bandits, drew only 20,000.

The Cardinals and the Vikings were not well known to British fans and virtually no one here had even heard of the two USFL teams. The promoters are reported to have lost close to a half-million dollars just on the Cardinals-Vikings game.

But the Bears-Cowboys game, billed by London promoters as the American Bowl, comes just as football fever has peaked in Britain. Cheerleader Productions` Croker said the Sunday night American football TV program drew an average of 500,000 viewers in 1982, but last season that had risen to 3.1 million and toward the end of the season it hit 4 million--10 times the number who turn out on Saturday afternoons to watch league soccer matches. The Bears` Super Bowl victory drew a peak audience of more than 7 million, even though it was nearly 11 p.m. when it started in London.